


States of Matter

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Bad Jokes, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Established Relationship, Humor, M/M, Romance, Schmoop, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-19 00:44:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ed voices some ludicrous doubts, and Roy assuages them with <i>science</i>.  And with sex.</p>
<p>[No spoilers?!  I don't believe it either.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	States of Matter

**Author's Note:**

> _Stuff I Should Not Have Spent Time Writing, Volume 500, 3rd Edition_
> 
> Featuring a Roy rather like the cheeky, über-lame one in the Big Bang I should have been working on if I was going to procrastinate with fic. XD

Ed runs his fingers through Roy’s hair, and Roy keeps his eyes tightly shut while he lets the whole day slide away and dwindle to nothing. Everything is perfect until Ed opens his mouth.

“D’you ever—never mind.”

“I mind.” Roy opens one eye and then the other. “I always mind. Do I ever what?”

“Do you ever think…” Ed’s mouth quirks, half-amused, and he glances away. “No.”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Tell me, or we’re getting a cat.”

“ _Bastard_ , this is the only place left that’s _safe_ —”

“Then you’d better tell me.”

Ed scowls a moment longer, tugging at a lock of Roy’s hair rather gently for his wont. “Just… when we ran into that chick at the grocery store.”

“Marina,” Roy says.

“Yeah.”

“What about her?”

“She was really—pretty.”

Most people would probably say _Stunning_ , or _Sexy_ , or, if they were of a less articulate inclination, _Va-va-voom_. Roy thinks he should write her a note telling her what Ed has said; odds are she needs to hear it. “She is that.”

“Did you…” His hands fidget, fidget, and go still. He hisses out a breath. “ _Damn_ it, Roy, never fucking _mind_.”

“Did I date her?” Roy asks, trying to meet his eyes. “Yes, I did. She loved the theater— _anything_ at the theater; she hardly differentiated. We must have seen that horrible play with the detective half a dozen times. I think I wept with joy when they finally took that abominable thing off the stage.”

Ed’s mouth twists, and he draws a breath and forces words out in a tripping rush. “Do you ever think about what your life would be like if—you’d ended up with—one of them instead?”

Roy waits through the silence until Ed darts a glance at him.

“Frequently,” he says when he can say it meeting and holding Ed’s eyes. “And then I try to stop thinking about it, because I would be _miserable_. To be fair, I suppose I wouldn’t know quite how miserable I was if I hadn’t ever had you for comparison.”

Roy’s heart swells as Ed’s cheeks stain. “Shut up.”

“I will do no such thing,” Roy says. “I was liquid, Ed; I poured and ran. I went over and around the obstacles, kept moving, left trails that dried up and eventually disappeared. But you—” He raises his hand, spreads it over Edward’s chest. “—are solid. You’re solid straight through. You were a _wall_ , Ed, and when I hit you, I _stopped_. I stopped frothing, stopped evading, stopped slipping through people’s fingers. You made a dam of yourself, and don’t give me that look—I’m _concentrated_ now. I am collected and full and brimming, because of you.”

Ed swallows several times, and then he rubs his thumb at the line of Roy’s jaw.

“I dunno about liquid,” he says. “Plasma, maybe. Fire’s plasma.”

“Plasma, then,” Roy says, reaching up to curl a hand around the back of his neck. “Shapeless unless it’s held.”

Ed frowns. “But do you ever think maybe I hold you _dow_ —”

“You hold me together,” Roy says.

“Plasma,” Ed says thoughtfully.  Roy scratches gently at the hair at the nape of his neck, and Ed squints one eye shut and leans into the touch.  “Lightning’s plasma.”

“There is plasma in my blood,” Roy says, “which I would spill for you without a second thought.”

“Mm.”

Roy scritches a little harder.  “That was meant to be romantic.”

Ed arches his back, eyes falling halfway shut.  “Uh huh.”

“You really do make me work for it.”

“Lazy.”

“I am _not_.”

“Science.”

Roy pauses scratching in the hopes of earning a coherent sentence after removing the distraction.  “What?”

Ed wriggles against his fingertips.  “Science,” he mumbles.  “S’romantic.  S’always romantic.”

“Of course it is,” Roy says.

“Bastard.”

“ _That’s_ not very romantic.”

Ed pushes the base of his skull at Roy’s fingernails again, and Roy gives in and massages some more.  Ed very nearly purrs.

“I think,” Roy says, “that we should spend some time tonight generating some kinetic energy.”

Ed’s grin splits his face.  “Oh, _crap_.”

“Wouldn’t you like to have an exothermic evening?”

“Roy, _stop_.”

Roy shifts halfway to sitting in order to wrap his free arm around Ed’s waist, drawing in close to his chest to gaze up at him like a besotted teenager—which is ridiculous, of course, because Roy is most definitely a besotted adult.  “Force equals mass times acceleration, if you catch my meaning.”

The laugh starts low in Ed’s chest and resonates.  “Roy, you are so damn _not funny_.”

“Mmm,” Roy says, nuzzling in to breathe against his throat.  “I am going to flood you with endorphins until you think you’ll drown.  I’m going to analyze…” He licks slowly, slowly, up the ridges of Ed’s windpipe, earns a soft whine— “…the chemical composition of your sweat.”  Ed’s laugh hitches deliciously, and his hands clench in Roy’s collar—pushing at him playfully for a moment, then tugging him closer.  “I am going to give you,” Roy whispers into his ear, nipping, nudging, breathing hot, “the anatomy lesson of your _life_.”

Ed squeaks, pretends he didn’t, and fists a hand in Roy’s hair, grinning with that edge that makes Roy’s whole body throb.  “Prove it.”

Roy sometimes thinks he should have been a professor, but the only subjects he’s qualified to instruct on are alchemy, political science, and Edward Elric.

_Lesson one._

He adores this couch; he adores the dark leather under Ed’s firelight-dappled skin; he adores its forgiving firmness underneath his knees; he adores the demure creak it makes when Ed’s hips rise off of the cushions, and Ed gasps out a single syllable that will _never_ sound more right.

_Discover how to love someone more than you love yourself._

He also adores this couch for how easy it is to clean.

“Fuck,” Ed says faintly, cracking an eye open and tilting a smile at Roy.  “Just remembered why I put up with your shit.”

“Because you’re so terribly charitable,” Roy says, undertaking the familiar project of wrapping all available limbs around Ed’s body while he’s orgasm-sated and still.  “And because I do such a fine demonstration of a cephalopod grasping its prey.”

Ed laughs—the helpless laugh, the _Roy why are you such a giant dork but I guess don’t stop being one_ laugh, and Roy would not tire of that sound if he had a thousand years.

“Watch it,” Ed says.  “You keep this up, I’ll kick your ass so far you learn a couple things about trajectory.”

Roy kisses his damp collarbones.  “You do rather make me feel like I’m flying.”

Ed prods at his shoulder with one finger.  “Anybody ever tell you you’re _clinically_ insane?”

“A number of people,” Roy says.  “None of them as affectionately as you, I’m afraid.”

Ed flattens his hand on Roy’s shoulder-blade, fingers spread, and goes quiet for a moment.  Sometimes, it’s best to push him until he snaps and blurts it out; others, it’s better to attempt to stay quiet and be as nonthreatening as possible.  This time Roy tightens his octopus-grip just a little and waits.

“I really hate metaphors,” Ed says slowly.  “They just get so—the more you think about them, the more complicated they get.  Science is the other way around.”

Roy strokes a thumb along his jaw.  “How do you mean?”

“Well,” Ed says, “what if the dam is… not quite as tall as local building regulations might permit a dam to be in extreme cases, and… the water overflows?  Or—or what if it breaks through the dam altogether, and the whole thing just—?”

“Ed,” Roy says.

“You started it,” Ed says.

“I… suppose.”  He settles his chin on Ed’s chest and waits for the roving gold-eyed gaze to return to him.  “Allow me to be painfully literal, then.  Any and all women in the world—however pretty, however popular, however elite, however purportedly desirable—are painfully boring in comparison to you.  The same goes for the men, for the record.  I don’t really look anymore, and when I do I see nothing worth looking at.  It’s just you, Ed.  You’re it.  And I’ve never been so happy to dedicate everything to another human being.”

Ed’s eyes are huge.  He swallows, and he swallows again, and he tangles his fingers in Roy’s hair.

Roy gives him a slightly cheesy grin.  “You’re the only star I want to orbit. You are the electron to my proton, and we are _bound_ by our complimentary charges—”

Ed flushes hotly at that.  “Who the hell are you callin’ the smallest subatomic particle—”

Roy kisses him to shut him up.  Then Roy kisses him just to kiss him.  And then Roy never wants to stop.

“Don’t believe you,” Ed mumbles wetly against his mouth.

Stretching out beside Ed’s lithe body is too sublime for Roy’s meager linguistic faculties to describe.  “What about me don’t you believe?”

“S’hard to… accept,” Ed says.  “Hard to settle into, in my head.  I mean, you being here is crazy enough—you _wanting_ to be here is a whole ’nother thing.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Roy says.  It’s even truer than usual at the moment; he doesn’t think he could move from this wonderful couch if he tried.

“You wanting _me_ is… my brain can’t really get around that.”

“I’ve never seen you give up on an intellectual challenge,” Roy says.

Ed glowers.

“And by that,” Roy says, “I mean ‘But my darling, I have unequivocally proved my devotion with _science_.’”

“I guess you’ll have to stick around,” Ed says, trying to hold up the glare, “so I can test my theory that bastard colonels are less bastardly when they get regular sexual activity.”

Oh, God, Roy loves him like lightning loves the sky; and the plasma surges in his veins.

“That,” he says, “sounds like a project I can get behind.”

“And in front of,” Ed says.  “And on the bed with, and in the shower with, and maybe in your office with after everybody’s gone.”

“You’re too much,” Roy says, kissing at his shoulder, at his neck, at his cheek.  “And no one else would ever be enough.”

“Dam you,” Ed mutters.

When he sees Roy’s delight, he just _grins_.


End file.
